February 18, 2023
Today is a double treat. First is Vigilante Days in Tombstone. This is a day when throughout the day there will be gunfights, 1880s fashion show, entertainment, etc. on the historic Allen Street in Tombstone. And it is totally free. We walked around Tombstone and enjoyed the sights and sounds for about an hour. We even ventured into a couple of shops to look at hats, clothing, gun belts, and most anything Western. It was very enjoyable. Prior to this we stopped at Pancho Vega’s Guns and Leather Goods. Awesome shop. Might go back to have a new belt made.
Because this is a free and popular event, parking is not the easiest thing to find, especially in a one ton long bed truck. It just happened that the second half of our day had a large parking lot that only cost $5 and it was only 3 blocks from town.
We had purchased general admission tickets for bull riding at the Tombstone Shoot Out Arena. The weather was absolutely beautiful. There was a slight breeze, sunny, and temperature was around 68/70. The bull riding started at 2:00PM. It was really cool. The announcer was fabulous. The action was great. Saw some great action. Definitely want to go to more rodeos and bull riding in the future. My favorite part of the bull riding is the bull fighters. We used to call them “rodeo clowns”. They are fearsome, athletic and courageous. One tradition at a rodeo/bull riding involves the children. They are invited into the arena. Then they have to take off their shoes and create a pile of shoes on one side or middle of the arena. Then, while barefoot or sock feet, they go to the other side of the arena. When given the “Go” signal, they run to the pile and find their shoes and must put them on and then run back to where they started. Now that is expected. But this announcer took the children to another level. He had them warm up first, like doing push ups in the dirt. Then, he had them lie on their bellies and then roll right and then roll left. Then he told them that they should take a handful of dirt and put in their pocket as a souvenir and if they didn’t have pockets, their socks, etc. The majority of the crowd was laughing hysterically. I’m sure some parents were not.
And then Nancy made a great observation. In North Carolina, little toddlers are dressed in camo. Here in the southwest they are dressed in jeans, cowboy boots and a cowboy hat. One we saw even had the belt buckle. Adorable kid. A local vendor was also on site selling homemade freezer dried candies. Nancy decided to try the Milk Duds. Not bad really.
